Sensata Employees Finish Last Shifts

Some of the 170 Sensata workers losing their jobs to China, are saying their final goodbyes to the plant this week.

Many of those who protested against the outsourcing of their jobs at Sensata Technologies, recently finished their last shifts for the company.

In September, Tom Gaulrapp began a 59-day protest in a tent across the street from the Freeport factory.

Gaulrapp, along with the other protesters, gained national coverage by cable news channels and were visited by politicians and civil rights leaders.

Since leaving the campsite in November, Gaulrapp says he's experiencing unemployment for the first time in 33 years.

When he's not looking for a job, he says, he's out there helping other working people who feel they're being mistreated by their employers.

"At this time when businesses are running rampant," said Gaulrapp, "and doing basically anything they want to the people that work for them, we need to step up and say, 'No, this is absolutely wrong.' We learned the hard way. We want to stop, or help to stop, this from happening to somebody else."

Gaulrapp said he's planning on going back to school in January. He has no college degree, which he said makes it more difficult to find a job of comparable pay to what he made at Sensata.

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